Social Networking

[andrewducker]

Google are announcing OpenSocial - commentary here.

Basically, it's a standard set of APIs that mean that you can host a social networking application on a whole range of platforms rather than only one a single one (i.e. Facebook).

Which means that you'll see an explosion of applications on every social networking site that supports it. On the downside this means that you'll be suddenly dealing with people biting you, Xing you and inviting you to be a slayer all over the place. But for every few hundred completely pointless apps there'll be one which actually stands out as useful.

It's also the second step on the road towards proper social networks:

Step one - applications that work in a social network. e.g. Facebook apps.
Step two - applications that work on lots of different social networks using certain common features. This is where OpenSocial is taking us.
Step three - applications that work across multiple social networks, so that they can include your contacts from Facebook, Livejournal, Slashdot and LinkedIn.
Step four - roll-your-own sites that allow you to provide your own basic social infoamtion (using FOAF, OpenID, etc.) so that you don't need to be a member of a social site to produce or consume social network information.

We're a way off yet - but it looks like we're moving in the right direction.

Comments

[ninox.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Not sure I want such cross overs at the moment, but it certainly has potential.

There seems to be a huge explosion of these sort of cross package projects on the move just now.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

But there won't be much support for applications that take you away from the original website. Many of these sites depend on their userbase being on their website so they can make money from advertising.